


Consolation

by randomalia (spilinski)



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Execution, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, everyone loves Hornblower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 11:19:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4219743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilinski/pseuds/randomalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It changes like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consolation

**Author's Note:**

> AU, set during Retribution.

It changes like this. The sea is breathing steadily, limned in the last light of a long day. The shots are slow to ring out, the smoke hangs in the air as though it has nowhere to go, and Horatio is caught on a foreign ship, watching. It takes time to bring her alongside and scale the hull, and Horatio's heart is thudding like the drums. He cocks his pistol and through the bursting haze of gunpowder sees the Spanish commander drop to the deck, wide-eyed and wild.

From the din Archie moves keenly towards him, his cutlass burnished by sun and blood. _Well-timed, Horatio_ , he says. His lips curl softly.

*

The court martial requires that the ends that have been unravelled are neatly tied off and not left to fray. A man's life is not so precious as the institutions that frame it; this is the reason they are at war. Someone will swing for it, that is certain. Pellew recognises many of the faces before him, and knows more of each of them than they would guess. He need not be told, for instance, why Matthews shifts so uneasily in his row, or why Buckland sits and stares above, at the wall, at the painting of the King.

Pellew watches the barely-hidden indignation of Kennedy and close beside him, the careful blankness of Hornblower as the trial unfolds. He remembers Hornblower: seventeen, fierce, so rawly good. So rawly lost, bent and clutching his shoulder in the spare light of morning.

*

Doctor Clive brought Bush news of the trial as he lay in the infirmary cell. Pellew called it preposterous, Clive said. That Kennedy and then Hornblower had confessed to pushing the Captain. Like Midshipmen trying to outdo one another; _this is a court of law, sir!_

Bush has heard of Admiral Pellew. He judges a man on the evidence of his own eyes, so they say, and naught else. A good man, a fair commander. It's perhaps fortunate they have him; accusations of mutiny need to be cleaned away or they'll stick forever, rotting and festering.

Clive unwraps the swathe of bandage from Bush's chest, inhaling for the scent of mortification, and tells him that Kennedy will hang on the morn.


End file.
